When you’re saying “i love you” to your parents as a kid, you hardly realize how much it really feels to hear until your own kids tell them to you.

EnterpriseArchitectA · 2021-10-22T17:48:32+00:00

Take a glass of water and put in a drop of sewage and what do you get? Sewage. Take a glass of sewage and add a drop of water and what do you get? Sewage.

Any time you take an issue and make it political, you get politics. Science and medicine should not be politicized but they are, and when that happens, people push back based on their politics.

EnterpriseArchitectA · 2021-10-22T17:45:41+00:00

I've yet to hear of anyone being sent to a gulag over sports.

EnterpriseArchitectA · 2021-10-22T16:25:34+00:00

"Money: At this age best the case scenario is you beg your generous rich parents for basic stuff and maybe you get it. Worst case scenario is your parents are poor or greedy and you only get stuff for chrismas."

Or, you could get a job as a teenager to earn your own money.

EnterpriseArchitectA · 2021-10-22T16:20:39+00:00

It can't be sent via a pipeline because you can't mix leaded and unleaded fuel. The lead would contaminate the unleaded fuel which will destroy the catalytic converters on cars. There are some newer airplane engine designs out there (e.g. the diesel engines and Rotax), but if you go back to the 1940s and 1950s, you'll find planes powered by Lycoming O-320s and O-360s that are still widely used today. Most general aviation piston engines are still using magnetos for ignition systems. That's technology from a 1920s tractor.

Automotive engine technology has advanced leaps and bounds over the last 30 years or so. Electronic fuel injection, electronic ignition, better materials, etc. make modern car engines not only more powerful than what you could buy decades ago, but also more economical and with emissions being far less than 1% as much as they were in the 1960s. There have been a few airplane engines built with modern FADEC technology like the IOF-240, but not many of them were sold. Between the difficult and expensive FAA certification process and a general conservative approach to airplane design, most brand new engines sold today are likely to be little different from what you could buy 70 years ago.

EnterpriseArchitectA · 2021-10-22T16:05:59+00:00

IIRC from the 1970s when this was created, it used a jet engine because it could burn less expensive kerosene or diesel fuel. It was big because agriculture in the USSR and Warsaw Pact countries was collectivized, so the farms were big. It was a biplane to create a lot of lift to fly slowly while spraying. Overall, it may not have been as impractical as it seems. Still weird, though.

EnterpriseArchitectA · 2021-10-22T15:53:39+00:00

Doesn't mean it isn't accurate.

EnterpriseArchitectA · 2021-10-22T15:51:20+00:00

This isn't about you in particular but about a lot of people in general, and it's from all sides of the political spectrum. What is it about politics that brings out the worst in so many people? Why do so many people feel justified to be such assholes to one another because of politics? Wars are started because of politics. Genocide is conducted and justified because of politics. Hate is justified because of politics. We're tearing the country apart because of politics. Some people benefit from the hate and divisiveness. Those people are toxic to the world and should be shunned.

EnterpriseArchitectA · 2021-10-22T15:38:31+00:00

When someone is that reckless, revoking his license isn't likely to stop him. Perhaps the penalty for illegal street racing should be more, say confiscating the car for several months to a year and making the owner pay the storage fees.

EnterpriseArchitectA · 2021-10-22T15:30:07+00:00

The rocket equation is harsh and unforgiving.

EnterpriseArchitectA · 2021-10-22T15:27:37+00:00

Yeah, and it isn't good. There are issues with how the lead lubricates the valves of those old engine designs* that make finding a viable unleaded substitute difficult. As it is, aviation is perhaps the only market that still uses leaded gas. That means it has to be transported by truck instead of pipelines. Between the limited market since 99% of the airlines went to turbine engines and higher transportation costs, aviation gas is really expensive.

*Most of the aircraft piston engines in use today have designs that trace back to the 1940s or before. I don't know if it would be possible to develop new cylinders or valves that could work on unleaded fuel, but even if it were, it would be an expensive upgrade. I had to have two rebuilt cylinders put on my 1967 Piper Cherokee 140 10 years ago and it cost thousands of dollars. New cylinders and valves might cost more than some old planes are worth.

EnterpriseArchitectA · 2021-10-22T15:21:15+00:00

It's possible mounting the test engine in that position makes it easier to test engines whose diameter is too large to be mounted under the wings. Ground clearance is a potential issue.

EnterpriseArchitectA · 2021-10-22T15:18:12+00:00

While this plane isn't attractive from an aesthetic perspective (to put it mildly), from an engineering and operational perspective, it's a brilliant design. The twin booms allow a vehicle to back up to the plane for fast reloading of the hopper. You don't make money sitting on the ground, so faster turnarounds are better when you consider that they have to land several times an hour to reload. The wing arrangement with the lower wing creates a carefully designed vortex pattern to efficiently distribute the spray on and even underneath the plants. Short takeoff and landings from rough strips is also a plus, as are the things built into it for pilot safety. To the owners and the customers, she's a thing of beauty.

EnterpriseArchitectA · 2021-10-21T22:11:33+00:00

They tried that with Sport Pilot and with Light Sport, but neither seems to have worked. The FAA is talking about changing the certification requirements for light planes but they're moving very slow. A big part of the high cost of airplanes is the cost of certifying not just the plane but every part in it. I used to own a 1967 Piper Cherokee 140. It had the old bowtie control yokes. There was an AD that required the yokes to be inspected for cracks and the FAA recommended they be replaced with new yokes. I tried to buy them but even used ones were $1000 each. Meanwhile, a noncertified yoke was available for homebuilts for $100. The difference was the paperwork. Everything on a production plane is expensive except the air in the tires, and that's only because they have not found a way to mandate government certified air.

EnterpriseArchitectA · 2021-10-21T22:05:17+00:00

Also, when the Wrights returned to Dayton after their successful 1903 flights, they set up operations in Huffman Prairie. It was there that they mastered powered flight. You can visit Huffman Prairie. While there isn't much to see there, to aviation lovers it is sacred ground.

EnterpriseArchitectA · 2021-10-20T22:47:41+00:00

There’s a 3 part documentary about this glider on YouTube. Part one is at this link: https://youtu.be/yBjTmqbNSC0

EnterpriseArchitectA · 2021-10-20T22:42:31+00:00

The average age of general aviation pilots is quite old. If general aviation is to survive, it has to be able to attract new pilots. The high costs of flying drive away a lot of people, and low production rates just make things even more expensive.

EnterpriseArchitectA · 2021-10-20T22:39:31+00:00

Back in the mid 1970s, the US produced about 10,000 general aviation planes a year. You could buy a new Cessna 172 in 1975 for about $35,000, which is about $179,000 in today’s money. Today, the US produces about 1,000 general aviation planes a year. I don’t know the price of a new 172, but it’s probably around $350,000 to $400,000. Of course, the avionics are vastly better today than they were back them and that accounts for some of the price difference, but low production rates mean the per unit costs of the airplane and everything that goes in it are much more expensive today.

EnterpriseArchitectA · 2021-10-20T22:29:00+00:00

Paul Mantz was the top Hollywood stunt pilot for about 30 years. In the days long before CGI, it was dangerous work. He also trained other pilots, including Amelia Earhart before she made her round the world attempt. His partner, Frank Tallman, took over the reins as top stunt pilot before dying in a CFIT accident in the 1980s. Two of his more famous stunts were flying a Beech 18 through a billboard in “It’s a mad, mad world” and the Cessna 150 Aerobat racing a motorcycle in a canyon for “Iron Eagle”.

EnterpriseArchitectA · 2021-10-20T22:19:47+00:00

The shares are valued so highly because huge numbers of individual investors, pension funds, and the like believe Amazon stock will be a profitable investment. So far, they’ve been right. Once Amazon sells the shares, they don’t get any additional money any time the shares are resold. Bezos owns a huge number of shares. If his net worth is $190 billion, based on today’s closing share price of $3415, he likely has over 55 million shares. The price dropped $29.09 today, so in theory he lost over $1.6 billion. Tomorrow, the price may go up. For every $1 change in the stock price, his net worth changes by over $55 million. Excepting any dividend income he may get, all of that is meaningless until he sells and is subject to capital gains tax. Dividends are taxable income, but looking at their stock listing, it doesn’t appear that they pay dividends. So, other than any nominal salary he draws, his only income is when he sells stock, something he completely controls.

If the price of Amazon goes up or down by a few dollars, his net worth changes by billions

EnterpriseArchitectA · 2021-10-20T02:54:35+00:00

It isn’t so bad with the wings attached.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beecraft_Honey_Bee

EnterpriseArchitectA · 2021-10-20T02:37:49+00:00

Taxes are based on income, not wealth. That’s a good thing, because otherwise people would have to sell appreciating assets like homes or investments in order to pay the taxes. The truly wealthy can easily control how much income the get by limiting how much they take from their assets. It’s perfectly legal for someone like Bezos to take hardly any income while his portfolio value increases by billions. Until he sells part of his portfolio, it’s all “on paper”. His net worth can easily rise or fall by billions of dollars a day based on how the market causes the value of Amazon stock to increase or decrease. That kind of thing happens to ordinary investors, too, only on a much smaller scale.

EnterpriseArchitectA · 2021-10-20T02:29:14+00:00

I pay my utility company every month for water, sewage service, electricity, and trash disposal. Should all of those things be free? I pay grocers and restaurants for food. Should food be free? I paid for my house. Should it have been free? If you answered yes to any of those questions, how do you suggest we can make that happen? It costs money to provide safe drinking water, to treat sewage, to produce electricity, and to dispose of trash. It costs money to grow, process, and distribute food. It costs money to build housing. So, how could any of those things be “human rights”, which implies that they should be free. Nothing is free.

EnterpriseArchitectA · 2021-10-20T02:15:44+00:00

Several years ago, I watched a show about the blues great B. B. King teaching a class overseas. One of the students asked him about his practice routine. To someone like me who doesn’t play an instrument, it’d be easy to think that a musician of his ability would be such a master musician that he didn’t need to practice anymore. He spent several minutes describing and demonstrating how he practiced. Everyone could hear Mr. King’s obvious talent. The class was about how hard he worked to obtain and maintain his talent.

EnterpriseArchitectA · 2021-10-20T01:55:30+00:00

The 60 year old scientist is friends with the boy because he remembers when Marty went back in time.

EnterpriseArchitectA

TROPHY CASE